Thoughts on PR, Social Media and Life

Evolve or Die

But I swear I wrote this on Tuesday, August 6 at 6:40 a.m. sitting in the kitchen of the house we rented in Rehoboth Beach, DE. Here’s what was on my mind:

“As we wake up to the news this morning that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has purchased the Washington Post, the storied and steadfast paper of record for our nation’s capital, I am struck by the number of comments online treating this as though something terrible has happened. “Sad” is a word that even the great journalistic icon Bob Woodward has used.

“While change may be a challenge, it strikes me as odd that anyone would mourn a shift in leadership that hasn’t even stated its future plans: as of this writing, Bezos hasn’t talked about a single layoff, a reduction in distribution or a shift in any aspect of the newsroom or editorial page. What we do know about the paper that brought down Nixon is that its circulation is hardly enviable, its staff has been repeatedly reduced and its margins are ridiculously low. On paper, the revered paper looks more like it should follow in the footsteps of too many other much needed dailies that have gone the way of the dodo.

“Seems to me that WaPo is ready for an evolutionary shift – something Bezos knows a thing or two about.

“Evolution is part of life on planet Earth: organisms large and small all evolve over time, or they die out. And while the evolution of an organism can take generations, each individual plays its own small part in the larger process.

“On a smaller scale, we need to evolve over the course of our lifetimes too. We must learn new things, explore new subject areas and develop new skills. All this will make us better professionals and better people, allowing us to offer more to the world in which we live and the people whom we know and love.

“Take a cue from the organisms that have walked the planet before us: evolve or die.”